About Me

We are trying to grow Breadfruit Trees and other fruit trees like PawPaw, Banana, Mango or Papaya in Zambia in order to provide them to Schools and poor households. We want to end chronic hunger and malnutrition among children and other vulnerable people in Zambia.
We are planting trees, fruits and veggies and take care of a permanent water supply for our community.
Also we try to create a self-sustaining community and offer the perspective of Jobs and work to the less fortunate, and especially to women. We are building a sewing room to teach women how to tailor clothes. We also build a library to teach children and adults how to ready to fight illiteracy.
Education is the key. That is why we are helping families to pay for their children's School fees andtry to find Sponsors for them.
We are an ambitious project, located in the Kazungula District in Zambia.
Numerous volunteers help collecting seeds for the nursery and watering the seedlings, build the sewing room and library and work hard to Change people's lives.
If you feel you want to support our project and kindly donate, here are our bank account details:
Account Holder: Juliane Friedrich
Bank: comdirect
Location: Quickborn, Germany
IBAN: DE30 2004 1144 0752 5074 00
SWIFT/BIC: COBADEHD044
Reference: Planting A Future, Purpose, your name
(purpose: donation, sponsorship, membership)
PayPal:
Account Holder: Juliane Friedrich
Location: Berlin, Germany
Email: plantingafuture@hotmail.com
Reference: Planting A Future, Purpose, your name
(purpose: donation, sponsorship, membership)
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us on:
plantingafuture@gmail.com
Also join us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/plantingafuturezambia
...and on Instagarm:
http://www.instagram.com/plantingafuture

Not long ago we happily announced the purchase of our new hammer mill. And apparently word about it spread like wildfire in the neighbouring villages. Everyday people from different villages, more or less far away, come to Chinkonono to get their maize milled. They literally line up at PAF Center.

everyday people from different villages come to PAF Center to get their maize milled

PAF now provides services to people from surrounding villages

At the moment we still keep the mill under a temporary shelter made of wood. But the actual building we construct to keep the mill safe will be done soon.

We also found a 20-year-old strong man who will be our PAF miller. His job is to coordinate the usage of the mill and do the milling for people who bring their maize. Also he is responsible to keep the mill safe and working. Now meet our Steven:

this young man is our PAF miller: Steven

So as you can see our mill is milling basically around the clock. That is good for PAF because we can raise some funds for our upcoming and running projects. But mainly we are focused on making life easier for our villagers and the people of the Chinkonono region.

Maize waiting to be turned into mealie meal 😉

Our PAF kids in action

our mill is very busy already

Stay tuned for more updates on what is going on in Chinkonono. There are still big things planned…

As you probably remember we moved our greenhouses to PAF Center a while ago. This turned out to be very convenient for everyone.

Now we decided to try again with a vegetable garden. So we are now planting our veggies and fixing the shade net to our garden. This has been long in the making and is bearing fruit as all materials are available.

transporting these poles for 15km to build our new shade netting

Our PAF kids helping unload the poles

PAF wired 😉

Our PAF members working hand in hand

Setting up the new shade netting

But don’t think all this has been easy. We used some of the money that PAF raised through donations and the annual fees of our supporting members to buy what was missing. But getting the materials from A to B to Chinkonono was a bit of a struggle. Some of those huge poles had to travel for more than 15km on an ox cart. Hard work.

We are using this project to educate members on effective vegetable farming and flower gardening. Kids and youths from Chinkonono can come to PAF Center and learn how to plant and take care of different types of seedlings and also when and how to harvest and re-plant.

planting veggies

Those little guys are getting a new shelter at PAF Center now

Our PAF Youth learns how to grow and water plants

Also the garden will be used as a means to raise funds by selling our products at PAF Market. We are planting cabbage, onions, sugar loaf, tomatoes and many other vegetables suitable for the climate and which can be consumed by local people.

Long time, long time. I know it has been quiet on here. But PAF did not stand still. We were working on a few projects. We have been moving our greenhouses to the PAF Center and we are currently building latrines there.

Also you might have been wondering what we are using the money for that has been donated and that we raise through our supporting members all over the world. Well…our newest “baby” in Chinkonono is a Diesel-powered hammer mill. You can’t imagine what an event it was for people in the village when the mill arrived by truck late at night 😉

There it is…our hammer mill

unloading in the dark…man, this thing is heavy

Our staple food in Zambia is Nsima, a thick maize meal porridge. Before it is nsima the maize has to be milled. A 25kg bag of factory milled maize meal costs 65 kwacha (about 7,50 USD) in town. The villagers can’t access this and can’t afford it. So as PAF we didn’t want to be left out.

Hence we bought a hammer mill to mill the village maize and give PAF an income. The maize meal commonly known as hammer mill is a Diesel-propelled machine comprising of two parts, namely the engine and the mill. The engine drives the mill and the hammers strike and crush the maize grains into powder. This powder is our highly treasured mealie meal, which we use to cook the thick porridge and Nsima.

We bought a 20 horsepower machine at 16,500 kwacha (about 1,900 USD). That might sound like a lot of money. But doing the easy math it will be worth it and make life much easier. There was no hammer mill in the village or anywhere close by. Hence woman had to walk to other, far away villages to have their maize milled. Each 15kg of maize will be milled at 5 kwacha. Our target is to raise 250 kwacha (about 29 USD) each day.

Our PAF members and their new “baby” 😉

The guys doing the test run

That way it is much more convenient for the women because no more walking far distances. Also milling it in the village is cost effective and makes it much easier for us to enjoy our beloved nsima.

I bet you want to see the mill running, don’t you? Check that:

From the proceeds we will be able to raise money to build our library and conference hall, meet running logistics and sponsor one or two kids. The milling will also provide employment for one boy and will shorten walking distances for everyone.

But of course you can’t have that mill just standing around like that. Even in Chinkonono that is not possible. That’s why we decided to construct a building to house the mill. And what can I say…our PAF members have been working hard and are almost done with it now:

…getting there

Constructing the mill house

almost done…good job!

So you see…things are moving for Chinkonono and PAF. Thank you so much to our supporting members and donors all over the world! You guys really make a change in people’s lives! 🙂

Lloyd just sent an update on that young man. Not only his he growing bigger and stronger. He is doing very good. He has broken off from being a streetkid and attends school regularly now, thanks to the donations of Stan. Obdu now can fluently read.

No wonder his smile is so smug nowadays 😉

Lloyd and Obdu

Shy smiles…Obdu is on a good way

If you feel you want to support a kid’s education as well and help a family pay school fees, please contact us about our sponsorship programme!

You guys probably know that we do have our greenhouse and plantations. Right? Right. Up till the end of 2016 those places were located close to Lloyd’s house as to always have someone to watch over them and make sure our plants and belongings are safe.

Now that we started PAF Community Center the idea came up that it makes sense to move our greenhouse and fields and plantations to the Center grounds.

And guess what? That is exactly what we have been doing in the past weeks. Moving the greenhouse is one thing. But clearing the space for new fields and plantations and preparing those for the new planting season is another.

We moved the plantations over to PAF center

Working this dry and hard soil is a tough job. Everyone helped with that.

Tough days…

preparing the fields for planting season

Hard work getting the new PAF plantations and fields ready for planting

So basically our “garden” has now moved close to PAF center. And to make sure all is safe we had to fence the greenhouse and grounds as well.

Fencing the new plantations at PAF Center

As soon as we have solved the issue of securing our belongings at PAF Center we will also move the water tank and pipes and set them up there for irrigation purposes. But for now those remain close to Lloyd’s house to keep them safe.

And now that planting season started we can grow our plants at our PAF grounds. Pretty cool, huh?

Education is a universal human right and books play an important part in attaining it. Books are scarse in Zambian schools. Usually the “pupil to book ratio” is 1 to 4, so one book for 4 kids…This is worse in homes as village homes never stock books.

To provide books for kids PAF has come up with a plan for a village library. Our library room will be ready very soon as furniture is being made. Thanks to good-hearted people out there we sometimes recieve books for our kids.

This time our friends from Australia have donated books to stock up the library. Thanks to Guama School, Liane Hornig and all who have donated books. Twalumba! 🙂 You brought a lot of smiles to the village and our kids!

Thanks so much!

The books cover all aspects of life relevant to kids all over the world. We received books for entertainment and education. All aspects of learning have been catered for, such as subjects like History, Geography, Science and Crafts…but also a lot of story books.

Books for the library

So when you visit PAF library be assured that you will find adventures of Alice in Wonderland and books on how to grow potatoes or how to sew a shirt.

Future PAF gardeners 😉

Happy faces all over 🙂

so many educational books for our PAF library

Awesome! 🙂

Apart from kids books our library has novels ranging from wild west adventures to The Book Thief.

A lot of books are still needed and our humble appeal from our well wishers is to continue helping us. Thank you so much!